Russian FM: US spares al-Qaida's branch to topple Assad
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ST.PETERSBURG- Russia's foreign minister says he believes the US may hope to use al-Qaida's branch in Syria to unseat Syrian President Bashar Assad's government.
Speaking Thursday at an economic forum in St.Petersburg, Sergey Lavrov said the reluctance of US-backed Syrian opposition groups to distance themselves from al-Qaida's branch in Syria, the Nusra Front, has been a major reason behind continuing fighting.
He said the US could be "playing some kind of game here, and they may want to keep Nusra in some form and use it to topple the regime."
